Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the RAS

Software Portability: Forty Years Later.

Authors

Alexey Khoroshilov, Denis Silakov.

Abstract

The software portability problem is a well-known problem in software engineering, and there are many approaches to fix it. Nevertheless, when the portability question is not considered in time and unpleasant consequences happen as a result, these situations perpetually occur. This report draws attention to this problem. We hope to persuade software developers and their customers to more carefully consider the portability requirement at the initial stage of a project. This report discusses
several examples of incorrect solutions taken. We consider the most popular approaches to fix the portability problem and discuss their virtues and shortcomings.